


Fate has been cruel

by Shae_la_Hyene



Series: Hurt Capri fics named after MLP fansongs [2]
Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Cruelty, Emotional Hurt, Hurt, Hurt/Comfort, Lamen Week, Lamen Week 2020, M/M, Open Ending, sadness and sorrow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-25
Updated: 2020-06-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 22:55:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,753
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24913459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shae_la_Hyene/pseuds/Shae_la_Hyene
Summary: Lamen week day 5 : Soulmates AUBoth of them had lost hope of finding their soulmates, after a while.After that, they lost hope that it'd change anything.After more time, they lost hope of being able to love them at all.But then they met, and they lost all the hope that was left in them.
Relationships: Damen/Laurent (Captive Prince)
Series: Hurt Capri fics named after MLP fansongs [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1948678
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19
Collections: Lamen Week 2020





	Fate has been cruel

Damen knew his soulmate wasn’t someone near him. At first he thought it would be someone asking “what’s your name sweetheart” when he was a child.  
But years passed and that hope passed with it.  
As he grew up, he knew they couldn’t be near the palace. Or Ios. Maybe not even in the country. After all, it was in veretian.  
Everyone knew who he was on sight. And when he’ll become the King, his face will be stamped on coins, and everyone in the country, and a lot of people outside or it, would just recognize him on sight.  
He didn’t really allow himself to dwell on it. They will come when they are meant to, and not a moment sooner.

Laurent didn’t know what to think of what was written on his wrist.  
“I speak your language better than you speak mine, sweetheart.”  
Was it meant to be said as a joke ? Whispered tenderly in his ear after a banquet ? In an insulted and aggressive voice in the middle of a tavern brawl ?  
Did the other thought himself smart enough to talk him down like that ?  
This idea filled Laurent with anger and it was with spite that he spent hours on sight his nose buried in books, talking with teachers, to learn all languages to its perfection.  
The court slang. The one spoke in harbors and brothels. Every single vaskian dialects.  
Until he stopped. He kept studying it, but eventually… he realized it was futile.  
He didn’t have anything to prove to them. If they were to come to him with an insult, he’d teach them good manners and move on with his life. He didn’t need anyone.  
He had his brother. It would always be enough.  
He remembered being around four, realizing what ‘soulmate’ meant, and that whatever was written on Auguste’s and his own wrist, meant that he wasn’t Auguste’s soulmate. This would have made it so much easier if they just were. They were so well, so fitting, together. They could talk of anything, enjoyed nothing more than spend time in each other’s company, knew each other so well…  
But Auguste had his soulmate that he was waiting for excitedly.  
And, somewhere, Laurent had his.

Damen was proud of his father’s decision about attacking Vere. Reconquer Delpha was a worthy fight, and his father’s reign would be marked by his victory. He would forever be known as the King who won Delpha back with his strength and honor.  
He knew what they were doing was right, freeing their people from under the veretian thumb.  
But every time a veretian fell, he couldn’t help but wonder if it was his soulmate. If their future had been cut down sooner than what fate had planned for them. If that meant he was doomed to never meet them.  
But reason brushed it aside. He trusted fate and its mysterious ways. It was bound to happen eventually. And they wouldn’t be that soldier that fell under his sword.  
They would be his soulmate, and they would be happy.

When he saw that beast of a man push his sword in his brother’s body, Laurent knew the world had ended. Nothing else existed, because Auguste was dead and he was Laurent’s world. From the first hours, days, months after that, he only registered the pain and grief. That was all he could remember. He woke, walked, ate and lived only of pain.  
The words on his wrist were wrong, because that was his soulmate that died that day.  
When anger took the grief’s place, it burned down everything in him. Burying the child he had once been. It added a veil of scarlet over the world, and the blaze of it reformed, keeping him standing with one unique goal : revenge his brother, kill his killer.  
He looked at his wrist and refused to learn or practice any more akielon for the rest of his life. If his soulmate was an akielon, he didn’t wanted them.  
Time passed, and another truth imposed itself. He couldn’t trust anyone.  
And he hated everybody. If his soulmate was still meant to come to him, he didn’t want them. He didn’t need anyone. The only exception to that rule was dead.

Kastor had betrayed him. Jokaste had put him in chains.  
His father was dead.  
All Damen knew about love was crushing down, swallowed by the waves that sailed him to Vere. How was he supposed to love again ? To trust again.  
If he ever met that soulmate of his, will he look at them everyday with the fear of betrayal ?  
The primal drive of survival was fighting in himself against the dizziness of being completely uprooted. He never felt so alone…

Facing the man who probably hated him and wanted him dead even more than apparently his brother and his past lover, was a situation that could lead to his death really quickly. He had to tread carefully, hoping the boy wouldn’t recognize him.  
It was no boy. That man was young, but the harsh lines of his faces and the ice in his eyes didn’t leave any doubt. That was a man, and a very spoiled little princeling, too.  
Damen waited to see recognition on that face and saw none. Boredom, at most.  
It was still there as he ordered for Damen to be broken on the post. Spoiled prat.  
But then he seemed to hesitate, and turned back, asking for Damen’s gag to be removed.  
“I want to talk to him,” the prince said.  
They removed the gag and Damen moved his lips and tongue a bit, relishing in the feeling before being inevitably gagged again.  
“What’s your name, sweetheart ?” asked the princeling in a falsely sweet voice.  
There was danger behind those lips.  
Damen didn’t answer.  
“Perhaps he’s deficient,” said one of the courtiers.  
For some reason, it made Damen angrier.  
The prince repeated his question in stilted akielon. Damen smirked.  
“I speak your language better than you speak mine, sweetheart,” he said around his grin.  
It was only then that he realized what had been said to him. The exact words, in veretian, upon first meeting him…  
That was his soulmate.

So his Uncle has negociated for him to be sent a bed slave. Not a very amusing joke. Maybe just to twist the knife on how he thought Laurent still belonged to him and to no one else. Or just on how Laurent wasn’t able to have a real sexual life now that he left his bed. Something to make the court remember that Laurent was broken and frigid.  
But he would brush it off. It was unimportant.  
He would just free the slave, and ignore them all, like always.  
He was not prepared to face him. His brother’s killer, kneeling, restrained by heavy chains, gagged and at his mercy. He was not prepared for him to be that slave.  
He almost stopped dead in his tracks, and all that was left of his control went on controlling his face and body language, locking all his muscles at once.  
Ah. So they didn’t kill the beast. They decided to send it to him instead. More amusing, probably. Expecting Laurent to kill him and be the one who broke the arrangement with his bastard brother. In a split second, Laurent understood the depth of his uncle’s plan.  
He couldn’t free him. He couldn’t kill him, not without a very good excuse. He was trapped there with this inconveniently huge ‘gift’ with his own hands tied as well.  
He was offered the man he wanted to kill on a silver platter, but they took away all the knives.  
He brushed away the babbling of Guion explaining he was intended to be broken before becoming a proper bed slave. Laurent wouldn’t soil himself like that.  
If it was a real slave, they would be free before Laurent ordered something like that, but he didn’t say that out loud.  
“Break him on the cross, that would satisfy the arrangement with Kastor I suppose.”  
But as he turned away from the man on his knees, he felt a doubt crippling in his mind.  
There was probably something more he could do. Finding what would make that beast suffer. More than the betrayal of his brother. More than captivity. But for that, he needed to know more.  
“Remove his gag, I want to talk to him,” he said calmly.  
Laurent clenched his teeth around the bitter taste in his mouth. He wanted to flee. He wanted to slit that throat.  
“What’s your name, sweetheart ?” he asked, his tone sweet and luring.  
“Perhaps he’s deficient,” Guion said.  
So Laurent asked again in akielon, hating the feeling in his mouth from the sounds of that language he learned to hate.  
The slave smirked, sarcastic. Very smug for a man groveling on his knees.  
“I speak your language better than you speak mine, sweetheart.”  
The words ignited a dormant fire in Laurent’s chest. The very same fire that had made him despise akielon so long ago.  
The reality of it, of the words written on his wrist he read on Damianos’ lips around that ridiculous smirk.  
Fate had fooled him, even more than before.  
His brother’s killer was his soulmate.  
His control, his resolve, his walls, everything shattered in an instant, replaced only by rage, consuming him whole.  
In an instant, he had closed the gap between them, reading the realization on Damianos’ face, right before he hit it with all his strength. And again. And again.  
When he came back to himself, Jord was restraining him, his strong arms closed around Laurent’s chest. The barbarian’s face was bloody, his body spread on the floor.  
That was not enough.  
The courtiers, the handlers, everyone was panicked, walking in circles, like they wonder what they had to do now. But he didn’t care.  
Damianos was still alive, he saw his chest moving from his breath.  
That was not enough.  
“Get your hands off of me Jord,” he ordered dryly.  
“Not until you calm down, Your Highness, I’m sorry,” Jord groaned behind him.  
“It’s an order, release me, now,” Laurent said, more venom in his voice this time.  
Reluctantly, the arms enclosing him relaxed, and Laurent pushed them off of his chest.  
Slightly more in control of himself, he stepped on the barbarian again, looking him down where he had fallen, his eyes pining him in place.  
In akielon he said between his teeth :  
“I’m going to make you regret those words.”

**Author's Note:**

> I had planned to do two fics for that day, because I had two ideas.  
> But this one came naturally first and the other would be super long and I'm exhausted and recovering from a nervous breakdown, so one it is.


End file.
